Even accepting the existence of the cognitive functions as named in MBTI, each function is so essential to cognition that the idea of preference is absurd.

That's the eternal refrain when any choice is proffered, its never either-or anymore its all but objectively its not the case.

Where any choice exists there is a preference, it may not be strong, it may not be exclusive and when it comes to cognitive functions its very unlikely to be netly divisable but there's still a preference, there's still something that's more comfortable and natural to a person than another. So like it or not it simply is. Hence there's no invalidation from that stand point.

To me the whole tendency to rubbish MBTI on the basis you mentioned speaks back to the whole consumerist cultural malaise, choice was great, now its too frustrating, why choose which involves foregoing alternatives, accepting a marginal cost, instead of rationalising that you really can and should have it all instead?

You could argue its insufficiency or subjectivity or conceptualisation is inexacting and those are the reason why typology or the whole of psychoanalysis is often dismissed as of purely literary value but it works for a lot of people and is at least a place to begin thinking about mind, motive and behaviour.

The thing is, even if you'ld discard mbti as a theory and never speak about it again; people would turn to other methods of self-identification. May it even be astrology. Everyone likes it to see a purpose to his existence or being told his existence has a purpose. A purpose like: you are the crazy gadgeter or you are the starship captain.

It's not easy to live life without having created a purpose for oneself. If people do it via mbti this lets me sleep better than if they'ld do it over religion

The thing is, even if you'ld discard mbti as a theory and never speak about it again; people would turn to other methods of self-identification. May it even be astrology. Everyone likes it to see a purpose to his existence or being told his existence has a purpose. A purpose like: you are the crazy gadgeter or you are the starship captain.

It's not easy to live life without having created a purpose for oneself. If people do it via mbti this lets me sleep better than if they'ld do it over religion

Yes, astrology is the ur-religion. Astrology is the precursor of all other religions.

However we now know that the claims astrology makes are not true.

And it is becoming more obvious every day that many of the claims made by subsequent religions are also not true. For instance, the Exodus never occurred, and the Book of Mormon is not a history of North and Central America.

So we shouldn't be surprised that the claim made by MBTI is also not true.

So perhaps it is time to start to see astrology, Judaism, Christianity, the New Age, Mormonism, Scientology and MBTI as part of our mytho-poetic heritage.

And yes, mythos and poesy inform our language. We name the planets after Ancient Greek gods but today we don't imagine them to be gods.

MBTI, like all type theories, are classification schemes. But people, especially people ON THIS SITE, forget that, and think that the classification is a thing in itself that operates and control personality and behavior. They have it very backwards: the behavior drives the type, the type doesn't drive behavior. That faulty assumptions sneaks into so many threads on this forum, for example, where people are trying to figure out what interests and people are compatible with their type. It's dumb.

It's interesting why that happens, though. To me, identity is a vacuum. People want to think they are something and when they feel like they have nothing firm to grasp on to (which, ironically, is what Buddhist philosophers say is the nature of self) they find something else, filling the vacuum. I see this happen during meditation all the time. It's pretty neato.

Some people I have spoken to about personality typing have claimed that it is no better than astrology. I think that this goes too far. I think the point about there not being a bimodal distribution along the preference axis is an important one and of course, like astrology, the MBTI is open to the Forer effect (you tend see what you are prompted to see). But some of the recent research, such as the Big 5 /OCEAN personality trait research produces empirical and repeatable evidence that personality can be described using five traits, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism and the first four map reasonably closely to the mbti SN, JP, EI and FT. We can see the mbti types as being characatures of personality based on extremes of preference.

Of course people go too far in using the MBTI stereotypes but that doesn't mean there isn't some validity. When I see a computer geek, or a poet, or a sales consultant, I am fairly sure I could make a good guess about which MBTI type they would test as. There might be some spurious theory behind MBTI but in many ways the test is more like a mathematical "proof" than a theory. If you answer a long set of questions in a consistent and self aware manner than the description or stereotype you will end up with is simply a re-wording of the claims you have made about yourself. The behaviour patterns the MBTI "predicts" are just the patterns that correlate with the pattern you have established in answering the questions.

Somatic Type and Psychological Type

Originally Posted by sisyphus

Some people I have spoken to about personality typing have claimed that it is no better than astrology. I think that this goes too far. I think the point about there not being a bimodal distribution along the preference axis is an important one and of course, like astrology, the MBTI is open to the Forer effect (you tend see what you are prompted to see). But some of the recent research, such as the Big 5 /OCEAN personality trait research produces empirical and repeatable evidence that personality can be described using five traits, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism and the first four map reasonably closely to the mbti SN, JP, EI and FT. We can see the mbti types as being characatures of personality based on extremes of preference.

Of course people go too far in using the MBTI stereotypes but that doesn't mean there isn't some validity. When I see a computer geek, or a poet, or a sales consultant, I am fairly sure I could make a good guess about which MBTI type they would test as. There might be some spurious theory behind MBTI but in many ways the test is more like a mathematical "proof" than a theory. If you answer a long set of questions in a consistent and self aware manner than the description or stereotype you will end up with is simply a re-wording of the claims you have made about yourself. The behaviour patterns the MBTI "predicts" are just the patterns that correlate with the pattern you have established in answering the questions.

Recent research has shown that we can be divided into four somatic types - Aryan, Asian, Negroid and Jew.

And when we do the Somatic Type Indicator Test (STIT) we find that we do fall into these four somatic types.

Of course it is all just fun and we can type celebrities and our families, our neighbours our pets, and even ourselves.

But there is a serious side and that is found in Eugenics.

And like MBTI, Eugenics was founded in the USA but perfected elsewhere.

There are of course Eugenics deniers just as there are MBTI deniers here. And frankly I wonder what they are doing here. Plainly they are trolls.

But take a tip from me and ask yourselves - what is the somatic type of the trolls?

Behaviour is dependant on many variables but the way you view the world is more or less fixed. We are social creatures. It makes sense for our species to have divided itself up into different roles. If you think of mankind as one organism, wouldn't it make sense for that organism to assign different tasks to different parts? People can use their feet to draw a picture but wouldn't it make more sense to use your hands? That's what they were made for. I don't think it's even all to do with different jobs, I think it's more to do with each type banging their own drum, just so that side of the equation gets heard. Yes, it is important for entp's/enfp's to sail ahead with new ideas but it is also important that we are not allowed to lose the run of ourselves so we need isfj's/istj's to put the breaks on. The survival of our species depends on it. We need both and one person cannot be both. You can't shout "I want it better" from the bottom of your soul if you're motto is "If it aint broke, don't fix it". You'd have to be a split personality for that to work.